Project Hail Mary & Science Fiction's Hero Problem
- Mar 24
- 4 min read
An excellent adaptation which narrowly escapes gravity’s pull
Project Hail Mary
Last night I painfully tore myself away from the final 50 pages of my Children of Time re-read and went to see the latest film everyone’s talking about: Project Hail Mary. I’d read the book back in summer 2023 and remembered it fondly, with one exception I’ll get into momentarily.
Experience has made me (and I assume everyone, by now) wary of adaptations, particularly with mainstream films like this which so often throw away complexity in hopes of universal appeal. And this adaptation was by no means perfect (if such a thing is even possible) but damn if it’s not the closest I’ve seen in a long time.
If you’re unfamiliar, Project Hail Mary is from Andy Weir, the same author as The Martian – which is about as grounded in real science as a story of interplanetary science fiction can get. Project Hail Mary mostly retains that plucky science-focused tone while upping the imagination considerably with alien life forms and an existential interstellar threat.
The book – and film – adds first contact and a fun, cooperative relationship to the formula which made The Martian successful, and in my opinion improves upon it by leaps and bounds. I was tearing up at multiple points in the film, partly just because this is the sci-fi I’ve been waiting so long to see brought to life. (Same with Murderbot, and perhaps Dune to some extent).
Now, the book issue I alluded to earlier. You see, I came to Project Hail Mary after reading The Martian, Ready Player One, The Bobiverse and books I've since scrubbed from my memory. What these had in common, at least in my experience, was their protagonists. Why was it always the same guy?
Sci-Fi's (and Hollywood's) Hero Problem
He's male, white, and cishet; he's a goofy nerd who's just stumbled into incredible responsibility; he tells us he has a way with the ladies but that's not the focus right now; he's got more 80s pop culture references in him than Season Five of Stranger Things. His narration and technical explanations are smooth enough that you can mostly forget the many ways you’d probably dislike him if you weren’t in his head.
All that to say, I went into Project Hail Mary with a bone to pick against that protagonist. Dr. Ryland Grace isn’t particularly egregious when compared to his predecessors, but was similar enough to impact my enjoyment of the novel. (And as for the question above, we know why: the primary audience for these books is close enough to that character that he can serve as a relatable, wise-cracking blank slate for them to see themselves in – just like the Bellas and Katnisses of yesteryear.)
My personal weariness with the archetype aside – after all, who else is reading all those books without fully liking the protagonists? – Project Hail Mary makes me feel like we're getting to a ridiculous point of (anti-)representation when it comes to science fiction films and television. Interstellar, The Martian, Ad Astra, Dune, Mickey-17, and Project Hail Mary are all space epics set at variously distant points in the future. They're also all selling tickets based on the white male lead front and center on their posters.
Yes, where applicable, the characters in the original media were also white men. Yes, once upon a time there were also white women on the posters for Gravity and Arrival. Yes, that's the world we live in. But that's not at all representative of the science fiction I read. Which makes it all the more frustrating when even Murderbot picks a white guy to play its racially ambiguous, neurodivergent, genderless and asexual protagonist.
Even if I were to accept that this is the only way these projects are going to get made right now, I'm still worried about the impact this will have in the future. We're already in a world where the crossover between fans of science fiction films and books is limited – how are we ever going to bridge the gap when they're also consuming such different stories? Not to mention simple representation: how often do girls and racialized kids need to see themselves killed off as part of the white guy's backstory before they give up on their dreams?
... But also, Ryan Gosling nailed it. The whole production did. As with my experience reading Weir's book, it's the system and pattern I'm frustrated with rather than the individual work itself. Say that more than once, though, and do you start defending the system and pattern?
Hope & Action
Maybe this is just hopeful for me, but the simple fact is that the 80s references won't go on forever – Ready Player One's world be damned. As I mentioned before, these protagonists are no longer representative of the science fiction genre; eventually, Hollywood will want to adapt something that they can't force a white guy in front of without alienating the entire fan base.
And that's kind of already happening, with Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive. The author has said from the beginning that characters like Kaladin and Dalinar will be portrayed by non-white actors or won't be portrayed at all – famously even turning down Henry Cavill who wanted to play Kaladin. If Stormlight gets made, it'll be a big step in establishing that diversity is possible on the screen as well as on the page.
As for what we can do; support diverse artists and initiatives! Don't let popularity tell you what's worth consuming, or you'll find yourself scrolling TikTok all day. If you're looking for recommendations, check out Simon Jimenez's The Vanished Birds, N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, Stephen Graham Jones' The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Rebecca Roanhorse's Black Sun. (And nothing against white male authors like Adrian Tchaikovsky either; his science fiction and fantasy alike are at least questioning important societal themes!)
Have you had a chance to see the film? I can't help but recommend it in spite of everything. Let me know what you think!
Thanks for reading and until next time <3
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